Ask your personal trainer: "How often should I be training in a week?" TFW PDX

Coach Josh here from Training for Warriors Portland, and I wanted to answer one of the most common questions I get:

"How many days a week do I need to workout, in order to get good results?"

Let me tell a story to answer that.

I remember when I first started working out, I checked out a weightlifting book from the library in junior high. I knew that I was a scrawny kid and was constantly getting pushed into lockers. I wanted biceps because I thought that was what you needed in order to defend yourself. This library book was written by an old bodybuilder who had a really simple program, and one of the first lines I read was "Workout twice a week to maximize gains." I read that and went, "I can do that!" The idea was to start someone from the very beginning, in order to build up strength for your body. That way, you could go on and do more aggressive workouts. To this day, training strength 2-3 times a week is the centerpiece for all the other work I do throughout the week.

Thinking about Increasing the number of days that you strength train?

If you are first starting out, what I would suggest is working out 3 times a week, with 2 of those days focused on strength.

As you get stronger and you build muscle and your metabolism speeds up, you will notice:

#1) You won't be as sore as when you first started, like when it hurts to walk down the stairs, or when you have to rappel down the toilet paper to get down to the toilet seat.

#2) you're going to be able to do more of the advanced workouts. If you've never tried weight-lifting before, then squats and deadlifts will be pretty challenging for you. But once you've got some explosive power, then you can add sprints and swings and all kinds of good stuff to really speed up your results.

When you train at Training for Warriors, you would end up training on a schedule with an undulating periodization scheme which just means A PLAN that won't let you overtrain, so you can work out 5 days a week with us and you'll do good work every single one of those days. So you can workout quite a bit and get good results with that. As long as you are focusing on a different system or movement pattern, or varying the intensity so you continue to make progress and don't just grind yourself into the ground.

To recap: if you're new, start out with strength training 2-3 times a week.

If you've been training for a while and are feeling great, just add in the extra day (and eventually another extra day when you're feeling it) and who knows? You might end up being that person who wants to work out every day because you like the way it feels!

I would begin cautiously... and incrementally add training sessions from there. Hope this helps answer the big question of how to choose the frequency of workouts.

If you have any questions or comments, leave a comment or message me!

Until then, Coach Josh here, helping YOU bring out the warrior within.